


dear fellow traveler

by alaudarum



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Azure Moon - Freeform, Gen, Ingrid's short hair, Pre-reunion, Timeskip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-17 21:47:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21700261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alaudarum/pseuds/alaudarum
Summary: Swallowing down any stray inklings of self-consciousness, Ingrid forces a grin.  In an honest attempt to lighten the mood, she asks, “Well?  How do I look?”Her old friend does not play along, as he is wont to do.  Instead, once he’s finished inspecting her shortened hair, he crosses his arms over his chest with a stern expression.“Terrible.  It looks awful.”--Ingrid chops her hair off the night before they leave for the Millennium Festival.  Felix finds the job unacceptable and insists on fixing it.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius & Ingrid Brandl Galatea
Comments: 13
Kudos: 84





	dear fellow traveler

**Author's Note:**

> [crawls into ao3 to write fic once a year] Yes I've been thinking about the circumstances of Ingrid's short hair for the past 3 days................

When the moon reaches its highest point in the sky, they are to meet at the edge of Fraldarius and Galatea territory. Felix and Ingrid are early; Sylvain is “late” (for he is not _truly_ late just yet, not when there is still a good hour to spare before the moon is high in the midnight sky).

Ingrid, however, is the first to arrive, taking refuge under the boughs of a large tree, canopy broad enough to cast a shadow over both herself and her pegasus. She waves at an approaching shadow, Felix, who pauses in his footsteps as he gets close enough to make out the rest of Ingrid’s features.

“Your hair -- “

Ingrid raises a hand to the ends of her blonde locks, twirling them idly around an index finger. She’s not used to how light it feels just yet. After all, it was only yesterday that she’d worn her hair in a thick, golden braid reaching down to her waist. Now, the braid is gone, replaced with an uneven bob that was very clearly hacked with a sword.

Felix continues to stare with an indiscernible expression. Ingrid’s stomach plummets when she notices his eyes narrowing; she _knows_ he only does that when he sees something he disapproves (in the back of her head, she remembers that Glenn would wear a similar expression when presented with something he could not condone as well).

Swallowing down any stray inklings of self-consciousness, Ingrid forces a grin. In an honest attempt to lighten the mood, she asks, “Well? How do I look?”

Her old friend does not play along, as he is wont to do. Instead, once he’s finished inspecting her shortened hair, he crosses his arms over his chest with a stern expression.

“Terrible. It looks awful.”

Now, it's Ingrid’s turn to cross her arms and look stern. Sensing her rider’s distress, the white pegasus at Ingrid’s side presses its snout against the knight’s shoulder. Whether or not it was intentional on the creature’s part, Ingrid releases a breath, and with it, the tension in the rest of her body. She gives the pegasus a gentle pat on its cheek before returning her attention to Felix, shrugging in his direction. “I just… felt like having a change before we left,” she admits. “Something to remind me that this is what we’re really going to do.”

Felix shakes his head in response. “So you took a blunt sword to your hair and haphazardly hacked it all off?”

“It’s _symbolic_ , Felix. It’s _my_ reminder to myself that I can’t just stay in Galatea when there’s a chance that the rumors are true, and if they are, pursuing it might make a bigger difference than trying to hold the fort back home.”

It’s the swordsman’s turn to shrug. “Suit yourself,” he says, which is par for the course for Felix. However, he steps closer, and that is something Ingrid hadn’t anticipated. He reaches out, placing a hand and some light pressure on Ingrid’s shoulder. “Sit down. Seeing your hair so uneven is pissing me off.”

Ingrid’s brow furrows with irritation, even though she chooses to obey and sit with her legs outstretched before her. “You already told me it looked -- what was the word? Terrible? Do you really have to twist the blade with _additional_ comments?”

Felix ignores her, and that bothers Ingrid even more, but before she can open her mouth to tell him off, she realizes he’s kneeling behind her with a handkerchief unfolded between them. His thick gloves are gone; bare fingers brush against the back of her neck. It’s strange, because even if Ingrid knows that Felix’s fine motor skills must be sharp considering his skill with a variety of daggers, it still catches her off guard how gentle his fingers are, gathering the ends of her hair that were not cut short enough.

There’s the unmistakable sound of a blade sliding against its sheath coming from her back, and were it anyone else, Ingrid would employ one of the hundreds of effective self defense methods she’d learned through trial by fire during the past five years. But because it’s Felix, Ingrid sits still, blinking as she listens to the quiet sounds of Felix’s dagger thinning the ends of her longer hair. Felix works methodically, beginning his work at the hair resting against the nape of her neck, before shifting to trim at the locks on the left and right sides of Ingrid’s face.

He evens them out so the ends stop right before her chin, before moving to kneel in front of her in preparation to fix her bangs. Felix drags the handkerchief along with him, and now that she can see her old friend, Ingrid takes note of the pieces of blonde hair scattered upon the cloth. Surely, it is a precautionary measure to ensure they leave no evidence of their presence behind, but Ingrid cannot help but smile at that additional measure of care.

Felix raises a brow as he gathers some of Ingrid’s bangs between an index and middle finger. “What’s so funny?” he demands before raising the dagger, gingerly slicing away some more pieces of golden hair. The lost bangs float through the air before finally coming to rest upon the handkerchief’s surface.

Ingrid reminds herself not to shake her head. “It’s nothing. I just -- I didn’t know you could cut hair, that’s all. ...I figured Sylvain might know, but I was just, well, it’s unusual for you to take an interest in anything outside of training.”

Felix exhales in what sounds like a scoff, but to Ingrid who’s known him since they were children, it’s easily identifiable as a huff of laughter. “Who do you think cut my hair on those long campaigns assigned to me by my father? The other soldiers?”

Ingrid laughs quietly with him before a comfortable silence settles into the evening air surrounding them. As Felix returns to inspecting the hair that now sits slightly above the back of her neck, Ingrid glances up at the darkened night sky. The full moon is near its peak, but has yet to reach the height of midnight. It’s a testament to how quickly Felix managed to work, Ingrid thinks to herself, but the moon in the sky nevertheless reminds her they must leave Sylvain behind if he does not appear soon.

The silence between them does not last long. As though reading Ingrid’s mind, Felix pauses in threading his fingers through some of Ingrid’s hair. “He’s probably warming some village girl’s bed,” he mutters before returning to inspecting the layers in Ingrid’s hair, even though both of them know that’s not true. Both of them are well aware that Sylvain was ever their watchful guardian ever since they were young, always ensuring everything was set and smooth for the rest of them.

Neither of the two exchange any words about it, but they _know_ Sylvain must be taking the extra time to not only evaluate his share of rations, but see to bringing some extras in case Ingrid or Felix happened to be short on supplies. He’s probably preparing another saddlebag heavy with vulenaries, elixirs, and antitoxins, much to his horse’s chagrin, scrawling out with quill and parchment yet _another_ set of calculations to ensure he leads the three of them along the safest and quickest path back to Garreg Mach, one that would avoid the majority of both Cornelia’s and the Empire’s likely patrol routes.

Felix kneels on her left side, inspecting his handiwork while occasionally raising the dagger to clip away a stray strand of hair here and there. He frowns as he concentrates, fully absorbed in his work. From this angle, face illuminated by pools of moonlight, he looks a little bit like --

This time, it’s Ingrid who breaks the silence.

“Felix?” she begins, softly, as though testing the waters of her next comment. It needs to be said, for it weighs heavily upon her shoulders, heavier than all the burdens and the yoke lumped in with being the sole crest-bearing heir to a territory spiraling into ruins.

“What do you want _now_?”

“...do you think Glenn would feel I made the right choice?”

Again, Felix stops his work, but this time, he leans back to fully sit on his heels. He maintains his sharp gaze on Ingrid, as though to seem he is unaffected by her question. But out of the corner of her eye, Ingrid notices the grip on his dagger tightening ever so slightly.

“Glenn’s gone, Ingrid. He can’t give a damn about your decision even if he wanted to; in case you forgot, he’s dead. Who cares what he thinks.” The vitriol in his voice makes Ingrid almost regret asking, but the catharsis of finally releasing that thought into the night air fills her with some semblance of relief.

Felix doesn’t close the distance between them, and Ingrid begins to think he’s decided to _stop_ helping with her disaster haircut, but he exhales a deep sigh and reaches out to run his fingers through some of her hair, freeing fallen strands. “I don’t know what Glenn would think,” he begins, and Ingrid is surprised to find it less scathing than his earlier comments, “but weren’t you the one who said a knight should follow their heart? If you think he was such a great knight like everyone _else_ seems to think he was, you should decide for yourself whether you made the right choice.”

Felix slides his dagger back into its sheath, emphasizing he’s finished with this conversation. Once it’s affixed back on his belt, he sets to running his fingers through Ingrid’s hair again, until he’s satisfied his handkerchief has caught every stray strand of hair.

He lifts the corners of the square cloth, folding it into a small package secured with a knot at the top. Plucking it off the floor, he pushes it at Ingrid. “Burn it on our next campfire,” he instructs her before slipping his gloves back on.

Ingrid graciously accepts the handkerchief; while neither of them were the sort to fuss over him carrying around some of her hair, Felix seemed to tacitly agree that Sylvain would consider it something to tease him over if the atmosphere happened to get too tense.

Tucking it away, another question bubbles to the surface of Ingrid’s mind. Again, she chooses to voice it against her better judgment. “Felix, you think so as well, don’t you? Otherwise, you wouldn’t have agreed to -- “

He cuts her off mercilessly, like she’d seen him cleave through enemy forces in the past. “We’ll see when we get there,” Felix replies vaguely but forcefully, and although an unspoken name hangs in the air, there is no need to voice it when the two of them knew Ingrid’s partial question could only evoke one particular name. Although an onlooker might find Felix’s response discouraging, Ingrid knows an ember of hope flickers within him, but acknowledging it also meant exposing it to the unforgiving winds, gales that carried Cornelia’s declaration of Dimitri’s successful execution.

Now, the moon shines at its apex in the sky, spilling white light over the chilled plains straddling Fraldarius and Galatea territory. “He’s officially late,” Felix scowls, and as if he were an apparition capable of hearing Felix’s words no matter where he was, Sylvain steps out of the darkness beyond, leading his russet horse by its reins.

As expected, the horse carries twice the number of saddlebags as Ingrid’s own pegasus, and there’s a rolled-up map tucked underneath one of Sylvain’s arms. Sylvain flashes a grin at both of his companions, but his gaze hovers longest on Ingrid. “Nice haircut, Ingrid,” he comments. “Bold and adventurous, _really_ sets the tone for our trip. Nothing like a change in how you look right before a big reunion.”

Ingrid lifts a hand to her hair, feeling the locks for the first time since Felix finished trimming it. Unlike her own handiwork earlier, the strands sit evenly, and to her pleasant surprise, both left and right halves of her hair feel symmetrical. Heat rises to her face as she wonders just how silly she’d looked walking around like that, though she supposes it didn’t matter much considering no one had been out and about. She smiles, and for a moment, feels her weariness and the weight bearing upon her shoulders lifting away.

It’s time for her to follow through on her heart’s decision.

Ingrid casts a glance at Felix, who returns it with a noncommittal shrug as though _he_ hadn’t been the one to fix her hair.

“That’s right,” she replies with a nod, this time with more confidence:

“Nothing like a change in how you look right before a big reunion.”

**Author's Note:**

> I think too much about hair cutting as a symbol/sign of cutting away your old self which reminded me a lot about Ingrid's A support with Byleth, especially when she starts to wonder if she'd made the proper decision re: leaving Galatea to return to the monastery as a knight. I hope I managed to convey that through this!
> 
> Find me at @dualcaster on twitter!


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